


Ain't a Thing In The Sky To Fall

by aseaofhoney



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: (sort of), Abigail's messed up home life, Case Fic, Character Study, Dying siblings and accidentally neglectful parents, Family Dynamics, Found Family, Gen, and the sort of family dynamic she has with Peter and what her dynamic is with the other characters, basically i love abigail and i think she's one of the most interesting characters in the series, this is sort of a character study of Abigail and how she's dealing with her situation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22483429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aseaofhoney/pseuds/aseaofhoney
Summary: 'You know we’re grateful, Abigail? For how much you take care of yourself?’‘I don’t mind.’ She did mind. She actually minded more the more she thought about it, but thinking about it made her feel guilty, so she never did.---------A character study of Abigail Kamara and her relationships to the other characters in the series. Title is from 'Many Moons' by Janelle Monáe which is referenced in the books as a song Abigail and Peter listen to in the car.
Relationships: Abigail Kamara & Beverly Brook, Abigail Kamara & Molly, Abigail Kamara & Thomas Nightingale, Abigail Kamara & Varvara Sidorovna Tamonina, Peter Grant & Abigail Kamara
Comments: 30
Kudos: 99





	1. Cheating at Latin

The sun was still high enough outside the Folly’s library, but Abigail knew it was getting late. She would have to head home soon, probably make herself tea since her mum and dad left for the hospital only a couple of minutes ago, but maybe if the results were good they’d be back early her mum would cook. 

Either way, they were out of garlic. 

Abigail could feel herself getting apprehensive as she came to the end of her page of Latin, could sense on the edges of her mind all the little reasons to stay longer at Folly, so she shut it down – the Folly was not her home. Maybe one day, when she finished high school and university and could begin a formal apprenticeship she would live here like Peter did, but for now she had an actual home, where she still lived, and had to go back to. 

She’d tried to sleep at the Folly before. But she had to make it look like she hadn’t done it on purpose so that meant she had to stay in the library or the atrium and have her Latin homework out in front of her and Peter would always drive her home in the end.

That hadn’t worked so she resolved to just wait it out.

That was Abigail’s policy on a lot of things.

She packed away her pencils and water bottle and her Latin dictionary and went to find Nightingale to get him to mark the translations she’d been doing. He was in the atrium texting someone, presumably Peter since he was out on their new case and really, who else did Nightingale text? 

He took the paper from her and began looking it over without her needing to say anything. ‘Ah, this verb here is in the pluperfect when it ought to be future perfect. _Fēcerō_ , not _fēceram_.’

‘Dammit, I know that one, that one’s easy. Sorry, I should’ve spotted it myself.’

‘Not to worry, that’s what a second pair of eyes are for.’

She looked down at the paper, at the offending verb. ‘It feels a bit like cheating.’

‘What does?’ He replied. ‘Asking for help?’

‘Yeah. Don’t know why.’ She took the sheet back and tucked it in her bag with the rest of her stuff. ‘I’ll finish that translation for next Thursday like you said.’

They said goodbye and she declined the offer of a lift. She usually took it but today she wanted the chance to be alone with her thoughts for a while before she got home. She needed to plan.

The first thing Abigail did was check her phone. By the time stamp on the text her mum had sent, and by how long it took to get to the hospital and back plus the average time spent waiting to be seen for important test results; her parents would be back an hour after she got home at the soonest. Latest if it was good news: two hours forty minutes after she got home. Latest if it was bad news: tomorrow. Or the day after. They tried to stay overnight with her brother as much as they could if there was a chance things were getting worse. They used to stay overnight with him whenever he was in, but he’d been in that much lately that they’d had to stop cause they were never home. Abigail had gotten a lot more used to being alone in those last few months.

In her mind she set some deadlines: how long she would wait to make dinner if they didn’t reply to the text she sent asking if they were picking up takeaway; how long she would wait up for them if they didn’t tell her when they were getting home. If she didn’t hear them come in, she’d set her alarm for six thirty instead of seven so she’d have time to make herself a packed lunch for school. And she’d visit the hospital after school finished because she wouldn’t have time in the morning.

With the worst-case scenario taken care of Abigail moved on to things she needed to do that night. Well, not the worst-case scenario, she reasoned. The worst-case scenario would be that Paul was already dead and they’d come in expecting test results and heard that their son was gone, or they hadn’t even made it to the hospital because they’d been flattened by a bus and she wouldn’t know until she came in the next day looking for them only for the receptionist to tell her they’d never even arrived – _stop_.

 _Stop_ , she told herself.

 _Here are the things you have to do tonight_.

First, she had to buy garlic. She was trying to cook for herself more often, because as nice as Molly’s cooking was (and it was bare nice) cooking was a life skill and she wouldn’t always have other people around to cook for her. Pasta was an easy place to start but she didn’t want it all bland and tasteless. They had plenty of spices in the cupboard at home but most of them were the burn-your-mouth-off kind that worked great for Sierra Leonean cooking, but probably not Italian. 

Then she had to boil the pasta, which shouldn’t be that difficult. 

Then she would try to work some more on her translations, but she might have used up all her concentration back at the Folly, so in that case he would finish some maths homework, which she figured took a different kind of concentration to Latin.

The sun was disappearing behind the roofs and it was chilly in the shade. 

*

A quiet bubbling filled the empty kitchen. Abigail made the sauce herself with canned tomato and herbs and the garlic she’d bought but it heated up way quicker than the pasta cooked so she’d turned it way down and hoped it didn’t burn. Apparently, food that you cooked yourself was supposed to taste better, something about the satisfaction of accomplishment, but Abigail suspected that hers might not live up to that.

Her phone pinged.

It was her mum, saying they were on their way home and she hoped Abigail had already eaten. She breathed out in relief, before she realised that just because they would arrive within the “good news” time frame, it didn’t guarantee that it was good news. She didn’t bother texting her mum to ask, she had a thing about not discussing important stuff over the phone, so instead she just stirred her pasta.

It tasted alright but the sauce was a bit cold because by trying to stop it burning she’d actually turned it down too low. Next she planned to learn jollof rice, which she’d never be able to cook as well as Aunt Rose but she still wanted to know for when she moved out.

Her parents got home just as she was finishing the washing up.

They sat down on the little sofa in the living room – they had a little sofa and a big sofa, although neither of them was that big, one was a three-seater and one was a two-seater and they’d been calling them that since forever. Abigail sat on the arm of the big sofa, but moved when she saw her mum’s glare. She didn’t like her damaging the arms.

She realised her dad wasn’t even looking at her. 

‘We got the test results back, and it’s not good news. Nothing catastrophic, but they’re going to keep Paul in for the rest of the week for observation. They’ll run some more tests and if his condition has stabilised by next week then he’ll come home the following Monday, but if it hasn’t –’ her mum’s voice cracked. That never happened. ‘If it hasn’t then they’re going to keep him in hospital indefinitely and we’ll discuss our options.’

Abigail knew what “keep him in indefinitely” meant. It meant that whatever had changed with Paul’s condition was serious, and if he made it through then everything would be okay until the next worrying change, but if he didn’t then this was it. The cancer was finally killing him. They’d had scares like this before and every time he’d been fine, responded to treatment, but they all knew that that was how it went: scare after scare until one day he just didn’t come home. 

‘We’re going to be at the hospital a lot, and I know you have school and your Latin and lessons at the Folly, so you don’t have to be there all the time. You know if we need to call you, we’ll call you. Are you going to be okay getting your own meals?’ her mother’s voice was wavering but her eyes were stern. That last bit wasn’t a question, it was an order; “find a way to get your own food, I know you can do it”.

Abigail liked that about her mum. She didn’t have hang-ups about anything.

‘Yes. I’ll be fine. I cooked pasta today.’

Her dad still hadn’t said anything. She didn’t think he was really hearing what was being said.

‘Good. You know we’re grateful, Abigail? For how much you take care of yourself?’

‘I don’t mind.’ She did mind. She actually minded more the more she thought about it, but thinking about it made her feel so guilty she never did.

Without saying anything they ended up hugging, the three of them, with Abigail in the middle, and she thought her dad might be crying but she didn’t mind because her dad cried loads, probably more than she did. So she hugged him and let him cry while her mum hugged them both and eventually they broke off so they could eat their takeaway dinner and Abigail could finish her translations. None of them said anything about it. There was nothing left to say.

The translations weren’t difficult, but she was tired and couldn’t focus properly. She kept fighting the urge to use google translate, which she knew was stupid anyway because it never gave you the right answer but doing it on her own was exhausting and Nightingale wasn’t around to ask.

She’d figured out why asking him for help felt like cheating: her mum had always been too busy to help her with homework, and her dad was smart and knew everything there was to know about working the railways, but his English was never that great, and it had been a long time since he’d had homework of his own to do. 

So asking Nightingale to go over her Latin felt the same as using Google translate, except he’d probably give a more reliable answer.

Sometimes she felt bad that her parents knew nothing about the Folly, or what Abigail was planning to do with her future. Sure, they knew about the ghosts and the magic and stuff, but they didn’t know how any of it worked or how amazing it was when it did, and she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to explain it. But then again, she was pretty sure Hermione’s parents hadn’t known what she was doing at Hogwarts, so she’d deal.

In the end she gave up on the Latin. When she put her answer through google translate it had at least three mistakes in it that she could spot.


	2. The Foxes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chapter 2 is v short but it's necessary for Thematic Reasons, enjoy!

When Abigail woke up her mum was still asleep and her dad was long gone. His job started _early_ early. She had a bowl of wheatabix for breakfast, packed a sandwich for lunch and left for school with plenty of time to walk and think. 

She had double English first thing, at a table with three girls who talked to each other but never to her unless it was to ask what she got for the analysis. Sometimes they forgot she could hear them, or stopped caring either way, and that’s how Abigail knew some of the nastiest gossip in the year without ever talking to anyone involved. After that she had a free period and PE before lunch. They were doing football which she wanted to love but sort of hated because she was never any good at it, and although that was a stupid immature reason to hate something, knowing that didn’t actually make her hate it less. So she survived football, and was going to sneakily eat in the library but then she spotted Sammi and Niamh on a bench outside the bike shed so she joined them – it was still pretty cold outside but the canteen was full. 

Last thing was physics. They’d been put in groups for the experiment last week and Abigail was not quite dreading the class today, but she sure as hell wasn’t looking forward to it either. Ten minutes into the lesson the girls in her group reminded her why.

‘So Abigail, we heard you can talk to ghosts?’ Chelsea’s voice was full of innocence but on the bench beside her Katie was forcing down giggles. Chelsea continued with her bit. ‘A friend of ours just bought a Ouija board and she’s looking for a voodoo witch to hold a séance.’

‘Ouija boards are fake, everyone knows that.’ She kept her voice level as she answered. ‘Tell your friend she got conned.’ What Abigail didn’t say was that holding a séance was a shit way to talk to ghosts anyway unless you had a source of magic to draw them out, and on top of that calling her a voodoo witch was about three degrees off the level of racism you’d need to deal out before there were legal repercussions should the victim choose to report you to the police. Peter had told her all the ins and outs of getting white people off your back when she’d asked him if she should report her third year maths teacher for calling her afro “unprofessional”.

She focussed on getting her equations right in her jotter, but she could still hear them giggling. 

The bell went as she was heading down the stairs, the teacher let them go just a few minutes early. Abigail sped through the corridors, determined to beat the rush but also because she had an appointment to keep. She checked her bag as she left the school gates: the Tupperware of Molly’s cheese puffs was still there under her pencil case.

She reached the alley and waited to make sure no one was watching, then cracked the lid. It took less than three minutes for the bushes to start rustling.

‘You can come out. It’s just me.’

‘… You sure we’re alone?’ the fox called in a low voice.

‘I’m sure you’re not gonna get spotted and we’re not gonna be overheard, cause no one’s listening so yeah. We’re alone.’

‘Alright, alright.’ He trotted out from under the bush and shuddered to dislodge a leaf from the bristly fur on his back. ‘Got anything in that box for me? Or is it phantom cheese I’m smelling.’

‘Depends. What have you got for me first?’

‘Saw your man sneaking about by the East Ham crematorium. Poking about the hedges and such, dunno what he was looking for but he went away with a broken antique clock that was hidden in the undergrowth, called it in and all.’

‘Who, Peter?’

‘Who else was it gunna be?’

‘Was it a crime scene?’

‘Not an official one, wasn’t roped off or nothing. Smelt funny though. And not just the burning bodies at the funeral home.’

‘Funny like... _vestigia_ funny?’

‘I dunno, do I? Just smelt funny. Now I reckon all that’s worth at least one cheese puff…’

Abigail conceded and tossed him one, and he caught it mid-air with a snap.

When she got home there was a voicemail waiting on the landline. It was from school – there’d been a leak in the roof during last week’s storm, and no one had noticed till that afternoon when the power had gone out and they’d found the switchbox damp and fried and further damage to a lot of cables. They had next week off so the general consensus was for the break to start early – no school till after the holiday.

Abigail didn’t know how to feel. Normally extra holidays would mean extra time to learn Latin, hunt ghosts, maybe help Peter with one of his cases if he’d let her, but now? With Paul doing worse and mum and dad in the hospital all the time? She’d find something to do with herself. Something to distract her. She couldn’t face sitting alone in the empty flat all day.


	3. Night Witch and the Underwear Guy

_aren’t u in school? no texting during class or the teacher will take ur phone_

_first, school is cancelled there was a power cut. second ur a hypocrite cus u text at meetings all the time. u text at crime scenes peter_

_ok true. got any plans?_

_nope. why do u need a favour?_

_varvara has a day out for good behaviour but me n nightingale have to be out of the city for this case. think u could babysit her?_

_u want me 2 babysit a convicted criminal? i hope i’ll be compensated for this child endangerment_

_course u will. come 2 the folly quick as u can._

Abigail threw her stuff into a shoulder bag and legged it out the door. Not only was this a welcome distraction for the day, it was a chance to talk to Varvara, who she’d only met a few times but who she knew was way more willing to talk to her about magic. Peter and Nightingale cared very much about the dangers of her learning too much too early, and about making sure her parents didn’t think she was in danger. Varvara didn’t care nearly so much about either of those things, probably because she was a criminal, and so there was a chance Abigail could manipulate some information out of her.

When she got to the Folly Molly opened the back door for her with a nod, and Abigail made sure to complement what she thought was a new apron (though where Molly had got her hands on a new authentic Edwardian maid’s apron she didn’t know).

Everyone was gathered in the atrium. She waved, Nightingale smiled, and Varvara waved back.

They all said hello but apart from that they skipped the small talk, and she got the sense that Peter and Nightingale really needed to be somewhere else.

‘So, all you need to do is keep an eye on her for the day and make sure she’s back at the Folly for five o clock exactly – if we’re not back yet someone from the prison staff will come by to pick her up. Any problems and you call us immediately, okay?’

‘Got it. How likely is trouble?’

‘No more likely than it’d be if we’d left you to your own devices, or we wouldn’t be letting you do it.’ Peter grinned, but she knew he worried about her. A lot more than he needed to, and a lot less than he would if he knew everything that was going on.

They left in the Jag, and she and Varvara headed into town to go clothes shopping at Varvara’s request.

‘How come they let you go shopping? I thought prisoners were supposed to wear jumpsuits, you know, Orange Is the New Black and all that?’

‘My arrangement is fairly unique. I get to enjoy a lot of things most inmates don’t.’

‘In exchange for not breaking out? – Really not your colour by the way.’ Varvara gave her a sidelong look and put back the vivid fuscia blouse she’d been eyeing up.

‘In the interests of maintaining a relationship. It’s flattering that you think I could just walk out of prison any time I liked, but I’m really not looking for a rematch after my last fight with the Nightingale. No, much of this is in exchange for other favours – your education is one of them.’

‘My education?’ Abigail tried not to show how excited she was at the mention of her future apprenticeship. Feigning disinterest was a good tactic for getting people to talk.

‘Didn’t you know?’ Varvara grinned. ‘I’ve been asked to “consult” – which means I will be teaching you spells the Folly didn’t come up with.’

‘You’re going to be teaching me too? I didn’t think Peter would allow that.’

‘It was Thomas’s idea. Given the current circumstances he thought you would benefit from my insight – I was trained for the war, you see, for survival – what about this one?’

‘Hm, the sleeves are nice, but I don’t like the lace around the neck.’

‘You’re right. It’s much too frilly. As I was saying, we all know this is not the same England Thomas grew up in and you’ll need to be able to defend yourself, especially with the Faceless Man still at large; so he sought the expertise of the person with the most experience in teaching defensive magic to young girls.’

She was talking about her own training, back in the war. It was a shame Abigail hadn’t taken history, cause she had access to two of the most immediate sources going. Not that they’d be likely to talk about it if she asked, but it was always worth a try. A “survivalist” approach to her training was news to her, but it did make sense given the circumstances. And having Varvara as her co-teacher meant she would have twice the expertise of a regular apprentice, if there were still regular apprentices kicking around that is.

They wandered around some more and Varvara picked out a couple of dresses she thought Abigail might suit, and Abigail folded them over her arm absentmindedly while she waited for the right moment to bring up the subject of starting her training early. When it didn’t come, she gave up and launched straight in.

‘It’s not my call to make, Abigail. Although if it were I’d certainly consider it.’

‘That’s exactly my point – why can’t it be my call to make? I should know when I’m ready, not Peter, and definitely not my parents. They don’t even –’ She stopped herself before she said too much. ‘They don’t even know what it is I’m gonna be learning. Not really.’

‘They may not understand, but they do want you to be safe. So does Peter. And it’s true, they don’t know you any better than you know yourself, but they _do_ know that magic is dangerous.’

Varvara stopped between two racks of jumpers and fixed her with a look. ‘Do you know how many of my sisters didn’t make it to the front lines, because they couldn’t handle the pace of the training?’

Abigail tried to give her own Look right back, but it was hard when she was thinking about dead Russian teenagers. She reckoned that was exactly why Varvara had brought it up.

‘Magic is dangerous. Whatever age you learn, whoever teaches you. Do not take offence at their efforts to protect you from it. It comes from love, not mistrust.’

She led Abigail out through the jumper racks, and continued in a softer tone. ‘Maybe you’ll look back and understand one day, if you ever have kids.’

‘Most people say “when” I have kids.’

‘Most people are idiots,’ she said, smiling mirthlessly.

‘Did you ever have kids? Sorry, if that’s like, personal.’

Varvara barked a laugh. ‘Of course it’s personal! But I’ll tell you anyway. I never had kids. When I met my husband we were still young, still enjoying being young – we weren’t ready. We tried a few times to no avail, and then decided we were better off without them. And then he died, and that was the end of that.’

‘So you didn’t want to? Have kids.’

‘I didn’t much care either way.’ They stopped in the lingerie section for Varvara to browse through bras. Abigail averted her eyes from the giant posters of half-naked women. ‘I’ll tell you something, though, only if you promise not to tell the Nightingale.’

‘Is it important?’ Abigail’s eyes narrowed, not making promises to sketchy members of the _demi-monde_ was pretty much rule number one and she wasn’t that stupid.

‘Not at all – I just like having a few secrets left here and there.’

‘Okay. I don’t promise anything, but I probably won’t tell.’

Varvara smiled approvingly, and said in a conspiratorial low voice, ‘I have a godson. He lives in America, I’m not on his records and he’s not on mine but I was his legal next of kin for a long time.’

Abigail gasped theatrically and it turned into a laugh. ‘I thought you were gonna confess to something serious and awful. How come someone made you their kid’s godmother?’

‘They didn’t. He was an orphan when I met him, a teenager with no one to look after him. I could hardly adopt him, but I could give him someone to call in a crisis. He’s retired now, lives with his wife in a big house somewhere nice and out of the way. Last time I saw him was his wedding.’

‘I didn’t know you could like, retroactively godparent someone.’

‘You can if you threaten a priest,’ she winked, and Abigail gasped for real this time. ‘What do you think of this one?’ She held up a matching set of underwear, green and lacy. Abigail turned her nose up at it.

‘Nah. But,’ she pulled a different set off the rack, this one a delicate pink. ‘I bet you’d look fab in this.’

She gave the matching set of underwear an appraising look when a man’s voice came from behind them, ‘Love to see your arse in that, sweetheart!’

Abigail’s whole body tensed up. She couldn’t tell if the man had meant her or Varvara, but he was coming towards them and she didn’t want to have to tell him to fuck off and risk him getting angry.

Varvara whirled round and smiled, like a big cat pulling back its lips to show off every fang.

‘Actually, I think it would look much better on _you_.’

When Varvara spoke Abigail felt it like a distant, howling wind up on the mountains that promised cold days and harsher, colder nights, the kind that killed the last crops and some of the livestock too. Her _signare_.

The man nodded slowly, took the underwear from where Varvara held it out to him and walked at a steady pace to the changing rooms.

‘What did you do?’ Abigail hissed, but Varvara just held up a hand.

‘Wait a minute…’

The man emerged wearing nothing but a matching set of colourful women’s underwear. He looked around, then glanced down, realized almost in slow-motion what he was dressed in and screamed and legged it back to the changing rooms.

Varvara threw her head back and cackled, a proper mad laugh like the furthest thing from women on TV, and she’d never seemed more like a witch.

‘That was magic! Used on an unsuspecting member of the public, a.k.a. exactly what you’re not meant to be doing on these days out!’

‘Oh, come on,’ her eyes twinkled when she looked at Abigail. ‘He was asking for it.’

‘… I’ll have to tell Peter about it, you know.’

‘Naturally.’

She was fairly certain that had been _seducere_ , which Peter had been cagey about so Abigail had researched it herself. As far as she knew it worked like the Imperius curse in Harry Potter and was even harder to get right.

‘You’re so teaching me how to do that.’

Varvara smiled. ‘One day. When you’re older.’

*

The dresses Varvara picked out actually did suit Abigail, which was a surprise, but after they compared outfits in the changing room mirrors she had to put them back – they were way too expensive. She tried to tell herself she wouldn’t wear them anyway, they were too nice for school and not practical for other stuff, but it didn’t work: one of them had pockets.

They made it back to the Folly five minutes before Peter did. He texted Nightingale to tell him all was well before asking her semi-seriously if anything disastrous happened. She looked at Varvara, who tilted her head to the side, as if to say, “it’s your call”.

‘Nothing. Just a normal day.’

Peter gave her a proper suspicious glare, but Abigail just smiled. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is based off of a short comic at the end of Water Weed where abigail and Varvara are clothes shopping and get catcalled by a random guy -- the comic itself was a one-off joke but it got me thinking about what Abigail might think of Varvara and how they got in that situation to begin with


	4. The Right Foundation

Abigail’s parents had been home last night. Her mum ordered takeaway and they’d eaten in the living room on the floor, mostly in silence, no one wanting to say aloud what they were all thinking. Abigail wasn’t going to ask how Paul was. If things had changed, they’d tell her. She wasn’t going to ask how they were doing, because anyone with half a brain knew they were exhausted. And they weren’t going to ask how she was doing, because if she told them anything other than “I’m fine, don’t you worry about me”, it wasn’t like either of them were able to fix it. It would just make them all feel helpless.

The thing about situations like these is there’s no way to make them better. So you might as well just wait till they’re done.

Her mum was wearing eyeliner that looked slept in, and lipstick that had worn away at the edges of her mouth. She looked knackered and she sounded worse.

‘What did you get up to today, Abigail?’

‘I was at the Folly. They’re getting a specialist to consult on my training.’

‘That’s good,’ she knew her mum had no idea what that meant, not really, even if she was awake enough to process it. ‘That’s good.’

Abigail said she was tired and started cleaning up the empty takeaway boxes. She wasn’t really tired, but she could tell they were, and someone had to make the first move. It would do her good to get some sleep anyway, she was supposed to be helping Beverly babysit one of her sisters tomorrow and while she’d never looked after a river goddess before, something told her it would be a bit more taxing than babysitting her regular cousins.

*

Beverly’s house was nice, proper nice with a massive bathtub and big rooms and French windows with a garden on the other side, but it wasn’t very lived in. By which Abigail meant she didn’t have a lot of furniture, not that it was spooky clean because from what Abigail had seen Beverly hadn’t spent a single day with all of her clothes off the floor. And she thought teenage girls were supposed to be messy. She’d been there once before, when Peter was giving her a lift back from Niamh’s house and had to pick up some stuff on the way back. She’d wanted to stay longer, she had some questions for Beverly about the difference between river-magic and Newtonian magic, but Peter insisted it was a losing battle – the rivers weren’t exactly secretive, but they didn’t appreciate being studied and interrogated either. Abigail reckoned he found this out the hard way. 

She knocked and waited a second before she heard footsteps sounding through the hallway. Beverly opened the door and smiled, rolling her eyes at the child-voiced shouting Abigail could hear now the door was open. ‘Thanks for helping me out.’ She was wearing jeans that frayed at the cuffs and a faded t-shirt that had once had a legible slogan on it.

‘No problem, I babysit cousins all the time.’ Abigail followed her through to the garden where Beverly’s sister was playing on the grass with a couple of barbies. 

‘Nicky? This is Abigail, you met her at the Spring Court, and she’s here to play with you!’

Nicky gave a glance in their direction and offered a ‘Hi Abigail!’ before returning to her barbie game. 

‘I just need you to keep her occupied and keep an eye on her while I write this essay. She’ll tell you what to do mostly but if she gets bored of playing dolls, get her to run about a bit, play tag or something like that so she’s worn out for the evening. Any problems, I’ll be in the kitchen. Got it?’

‘Got it.’ Abigail assured.

‘You’re a star.’

She flashed a dazzling grin and disappeared off into the house.

It was sunny out but not too warm, and the ground wasn’t muddy but it wasn’t exactly dry either. Abigail swithered for about ten seconds before she sat down opposite Nicky on the grass and resolved to get the stains out of her jeans later.

‘What are we playing?’ she asked, aiming for an interested tone in her voice but without the condescending lilt adults usually use on children.

Nicky’s barbies were dug into the soil up to their unrealistically skinny waists, arms in the air, and she was trying to wind a loose and fraying makeshift rope of grass around their fused fingers. 

‘These ones are called Emily and Shauna, and they’ve got stuck in this swamp,’ she gestured to the half-submerged dolls. ‘Because they were looking for alligators but they went in too far. These ones,’ she pulled another two barbies out from a small pile of toys behind her. ‘Are Jenny and Roberta, and they’re going to rescue their friends with this jungle vine, they’re gonna catch it like this so they can pull them out.’

Abigail recognised this kind of game. Nicky was in the stage where she could make up a story and follow it through without getting distracted, but probably wasn’t quite at the level where she’d want Abigail to make up her own part to the plot. So Abigail took one of the offered dolls and asked if she could be Roberta, then showed Nicky how to wind her “jungle vine” so it didn’t fall apart.

Together they managed to tie all four dolls’ hands together and pulled in unison until the unfortunate pair were almost free from the mud, but then the grass rope snapped.

Nicky improvised accordingly and dashed forward so Jenny could pull Emily the rest of the way free, and Abigail mimicked her. 

‘Yay! We’re free!’ Nicky squealed, waving her dolls around excitedly.

‘I’m so glad we saved you!’ Abigail added.

‘Now it’s time to get clean. Let’s have a spa day! We’re gonna get allllll the mud off you, and then we’re gonna do some massages, and some face masks…’ Nicky took all four dolls and laid them out in front of her. Abigail was about to suggest they go get some water from the kitchen to clean the dolls with, but Nicky started doing something strange with her hands.  
She held them out in front of her, like she was holding an invisible ball. Her little face screwed up in concentration and something started to coalesce in the air between her palms – a drop of water, that grew into an orb, floating on its own like a werelight. ‘Wash the barbies, Abigail!’ She commanded.

Abigail took a second, distracted by the magic, before she snapped to it and held out two of the dolls for Nicky to douse with her waterbending. The ball of water wasn’t static, it was swirling, and it stripped the mud off of the dolls fast. Abigail spotted a towel next to the pile of unused toys, presumably looked out for this very purpose, and she shook it out and laid the wet dolls down to dry. 

Nicky’s orb of water had turned a muddy brown, and she could see clumps of grass dragging through it as it spun. 

‘Watch out, I’m gonna drop it!’ Nicky yelled, giving Abigail just enough time to duck before she threw the water over her head. It splashed down behind her, soaking a patch of lawn into a small puddle.

She knew that the rivers didn’t do magic the same way that practitioners like Peter did, so there wouldn’t be a _forma_ to sense, but she still felt… something. Like the feeling you get when you witness a natural phenomenon in real life, one you’ve only ever seen on TV, and something very deep inside your brain takes over and tells you Mother Nature is much more powerful than a childhood of motorways and high rises would have you believe. 

It was bare strange seeing a kid as young as Nicky bend the elements to her will. She wondered if she could convince her to answer some questions she had about the magic of the _genii locorum_ if she worded them simple enough to understand, but then the back door opened and the opportunity passed.

Beverly came out with a healthy lunch that Nicky turned her nose up at but eventually was convinced into eating, they gave the barbies massages and dandelion-leaf face masks, and Abigail tried not to think about what it must be like to be born a goddess, because every time did she ended up down a rabbit hole. Every time she thought about what she would do if she had that power, if she had any power…

It didn’t help to dwell on it.

Eventually the sun started to get low in the sky, and they had to head inside. Abigail and Beverly helped carry Nicky’s toys into the living room, and Nicky complained about not being done with her game. 

‘But we were having a spa day! We can’t put the toys away now!’

‘I have an idea, Nicky, how about we do a spa day for us instead of the dolls? Sound good?’

Nicky weighed up her options, and decided that putting away her barbies was definitely doable in exchange for playing with real mud masks. 

They sat on the IKEA rug that served as decoration for Beverly’s living room as she brought out an overstuffed makeup bag and a wicker basket filled with bottles and tubs.

‘Which first –’ she lifted the basket, ‘face masks? Or _makeovers?_ ’ She offered the full to bursting makeup bag and Nicky squealed with delight. 

She unzipped it and Nicky started pulling out tubes and bottles to scatter on the rug. Abigail looked over her shoulder with a reserved curiosity – she’d never been any good at makeup, she barely knew what half the products did, or how to put them on. She guessed it was something girls learned from their mum’s or older sisters, and her mum was always busy and she didn’t have any sisters. Nicky found a tube of bright red liquid lipstick and decided this was the perfect place to start. Beverly shifted off the sofa and sat cross legged in front of her so Nicky could take her face in one little hand and smear red on it with the other. 

Beverly shot her a “help me” look and smiled. ‘Do I look glamourous?’

‘Shh! Don’t talk or you’ll make me smudge it!’ 

Abigail laughed and Beverly supressed a grin.

When she was done with the lipstick Beverly looked a little bit like a messy vampire. Next was a palette of glittery eyeshadows, which Nicky used just as liberally. ‘What kind of look are you going for, Nicks?’

‘Ummm… shiny. Sparkly. But grown-up so I’m using dark blue instead of light blue, cause light blue is a little girls’ colour.’

‘Very professional.’ Abigail said, and Nicky grinned. 

She sat back and Beverly struck a pose. ‘What do you think?’

‘Glamourous. Definitely.’ 

Nicky gave a proud smile, and then turned to Abigail. ‘Can you do my makeup? Please?’

She looked at Beverly instinctively for approval. ‘Oh go ahead, use whatever colours you want.’

‘I’m not that great at makeup, though.’

Beverly pointed to the mess of red and blue on her own face. ‘I’m sure you’ll manage.’

She was right. The bar was pretty low when it came to impressing young kids. 

Nicky said Abigail should choose the colours, so she brushed on a little bit of rosy pink blush and tried to dab a similar floral pink lip gloss on Nicky’s tiny mouth. It didn’t go too badly, so she went into the eyeshadow with a bit too much confidence. The green and gold didn’t come off as regal so much as Tinkerbell-esque, but Nicky didn’t mind. She looked in the little oval mirror Beverly had brought down and squealed with delight. She threw her arms around Abigail’s neck, almost definitely glittering her afro, and Abigail awkwardly hugged her back.

‘Okay, now go wash it off and we can put on some face masks.’ Beverly handed her a packet of wipes and Nicky let go to run off to the bathroom. 

‘Right. Your turn.’

‘You’re gonna do my makeup?’

‘Yeah! I’ve never seen you wear any before, I’m dead curious.’

Abigail glanced around at the extensive collection of products scattered on the rug and found that she was actually pretty curious too. 

‘Okay. Just don’t make me look like a clown.’

‘No chance,’ Beverly rooted out three bottles of foundation. ‘You’re just a tiny shade lighter than me so I think… these two will do.’ She squeezed a splodge of each onto the back of her hand and mixed them, compared it to Abigail’s cheek, then added a little more of one. 

The liquid was cold and smooth on her skin. ‘Do you have any makeup of your own? Or are you totally against it.’

‘I’m not against it, I just… never buy any. I got some as a present once but it was the wrong shade.’ It was odd having a conversation with someone while they swiped at your face, every so often she could feel her breath blow against Beverly’s wrist. 

‘Course it was,’ Beverly rolled her eyes, and swapped out her brush for a much bigger, fluffier one. She used a different blush that was darker and redder, buffing it in carefully, and then brushed a pale gold shimmer across Abigail’s cheekbones. ‘Hang on, I think I’m gonna do full glamour with this one,’ she said, and dotted the highlighter in the centre of her forehead and at the end of her nose too. Abigail wondered why the hell anyone would want to put glitter on their nose, but she trusted Beverly at this so she didn’t say anything. 

‘Right. Eyebrows. Never been particularly good at this one but we’ll give it a shot.’ She brushed Abigail’s eyebrows in weird directions and filled them in with a deep brown pencil, which felt a little like getting drawn on in sharpie, especially since Beverly had to brace her hand against her forehead for accuracy.

‘You’re not gonna give me caterpillars, are you?’

‘Nah,’ Beverly laughed. ‘I’m giving you full-on _slugs!_ ’

Then they had to break because Abigail couldn’t hold in her own laughter, and every time Beverly raised the eyebrow pencil she started up again after Bev had said ‘Come on, let me slug you!’

The eyeshadow felt like it took forever, her eyelids threatened to blink and ruin it with each tickly brushstroke. Then Beverly spent a lot longer than felt necessary comparing lipstick shades (wasn’t red just red? Apparently not) before she painted on a wine-ish coloured one and called the makeover complete. 

She could feel the products drying on her face like a thin layer of clay. ‘What do you think?’

‘What do _you_ think?’ Bev held up the mirror. 

Her hand hovered automatically to her cheek. She tilted her head, to one side then the other. Blinked, and smiled. ‘It… it doesn’t look like _me_ but it looks amazing!’

Nicky ran back in at that moment, plopped down on the rug and opened her mouth in shock. ‘Abigail looks like a princess…’ 

‘Yeah she does, doesn’t she?’

Abigail smiled self-consciously. The last time someone had done her makeup was a sleepover with four other girls when she was ten. It hadn’t gone well: none of them had been any good and all they’d had were cheap eyeshadows and lip gloss, and Abigail didn’t really speak to them anymore since they’d gone to secondary school.

But this, right here, was something else. And not just cause her face looked good: with the three of them laughing, doing stupid things and messing around and not caring, for once, about all the things she was supposed to care about, she thought maybe this was what it would feel like to have sisters. 

Beverly gave her some of her makeup to take home when she left. Abigail had protested, saying she was never gonna use it, but she kept it anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was inspired by a throwaway line in the bonus short story Favourite Uncle, which is written from Abigail's perspective and in it she mentions getting makeup from her mum's white relatives -- it's all the wrong shade, unlike the mac cosmetcis Beverly gave her which she says are the only makeup she owns.


	5. Haunted Clocks and Car Thieves

‘I just need your help with some research, that’s all.’ 

‘I thought you and Nightingale had this case all wrapped up? Remind me to start charging you for this stuff.’ Abigail protested, but she was already half way out the door and on her way to the Folly. 

Peter had explained the case over the phone: a rash of car thefts where the victims reported either seeing ghost right beforehand, being attacked by a ghost while their car was getting stolen, and in one case someone claimed that a ghost had straight up stolen her car. The location of the thefts wasn’t contained to a particular area and none of the thefts had taken place at known haunted sites, but the descriptions corresponded with real ghost behaviour – one case had nearly slipped through the net because the victim hadn’t actually used the term “ghost”, just that he saw a very confused woman who asked him the same question three times before dissolving into smoke.

They’d thought the thief was summoning ghosts as a distraction, and it seemed to fit with how the thefts went down (the ghosts appeared after the victims unlocked their cars, providing an opening for the theif), but a ghost summoning ritual takes time, candles, and sometimes chalk, none of which were evident at any of the crime scenes. The other day when she’d been out with Varvara, Peter and Nightingale were staking out a used car dealership where several of the stolen cars had been recovered, and roughly three hours in another one drove up – the driver made them and got away, but not before they hit several curbs and several more near-death experiences chasing him. 

Abigail had wished they were talking face to face for that part – Peter’s expression when recounting a cool thing Nightingale did is always priceless, and the best thing is he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. Instead she just got the full story of the high-speed chase over the phone as she headed to the Folly.

She came in the back door and met Peter in the mundane library.

‘I have a theory,’ he said.

‘Oh, then we’re all in trouble.’ Peter rolled his eyes and she grinned. ‘Tell us your theory, then.’

Her sarcasm immediately forgotten; Peter launched straight in. ‘The thief isn’t summoning the ghosts by any conventional methods, but he’s still getting them to appear at his command. A low-level werelight can draw them out if they’re there, so it wouldn’t take too much skill or training to simply feed an existing ghost then cast a small spell to draw it out at the right moment, but here’s the thing – these thefts take place in random places, nowhere with legends of existing ghosts, and from the cases I’ve looked into, nowhere with deaths that match the ghosts’ descriptions. They’re not local ghosts. So then I got thinking, could you import a ghost? Take it from the location it’s haunting and bring it somewhere else?’

‘Ghosts are usually tied to their location, though. Hence you get weeping women of whatever street and headless horsemen of such and such park.’

‘Exactly,’ he continued, getting visibly excited. ‘Which is why I searched the crime scenes and found _these_.’

He hauled a clear plastic evidence box onto the table. Inside were a necklace, a vintage lipstick tube, three dead butterflies and a broken clock – the foxes had told her about that, she’d nearly forgotten. ‘These ghosts weren’t haunting locations. They were haunting artefacts.’

‘Bingo.’ Peter grinned.

‘Then what am I hear for? It seems like you’ve already figured it out.’

‘Not exactly. Before we go after this thief we need to know if he’s a practitioner, and if he is, we need to know how good.’

‘Whether he just took the ghosts with him via the haunted objects or if he used magic to control them.’ He nodded. ‘So we’re looking for books on cursed objects, haunted artefacts and ghost theory.’ 

‘Better get digging.’

Abigail liked to think she was a sheer demon of efficiency when it came to research, and she’d never been proven wrong so far. In under two hours she’d found a passage in an 18th century volume recounting how a duchess had haunted a four-poster bed, a family heirloom that she had both died in and been born in seventy years earlier. Her family had had the servants carry the bed out of the house and to the grounds where they had burnt it, and as it caught the duchess appeared to them all before vanishing “as though freed from the bonds that held her spirit to the mortal world”. 

‘Do you think the burning of the haunted artefact summoned the ghost?’

‘It’d make sense,’ Peter had a quick look through the evidence box. ‘All these are damaged in some way.’ 

‘So our thief is more likely an opportunist than a practitioner – and I think I know where the opportunity came from.’

‘Oh?’ Peter raised an eyebrow.

‘Katherine Cliff Antiques.’

‘How’d you figure that one?’

‘First, it’s almost bang in the middle of all the thefts, second, there’s half a label left on the back of the necklace.’

‘Good work,’ said Peter. “You’re so quick sometimes it’s scary,” said his expression.

Abigail smiled, satisfied. 

She convinced Peter to let her come to investigate the antique shop on the grounds that she was usually better at spotting ghosts than he was. He didn’t put up much of an argument and she was glad, but she also liked arguing with Peter – it wasn’t like arguing with other people. Arguing with teachers was like a logic puzzle, except when you solved it all you got was detention. They didn’t care who was right, just that they were in charge. Arguing her mum was like those montages in martial arts films: hitting a hard, unyielding surface for the sole benefit of giving yourself stronger hands. It hurt and it felt pointless in the moment, but in hindsight you can see how it made you stronger. Arguing with her dad was awful, neither of them ever wanted to and they always regretted it but apologising was so difficult. 

But arguing with Peter was _fun_. He tended to start off with stances like “because I said so”, but he was so easily distracted she could lead him off down a tangent and eventually bring it back to prove how she was right all along. Sometimes he wasn’t even embarrassed to admit he learned something from her. Sometimes he actually beat her, and she learned something from him. One time on a case like this he’d introduced her as his sister to deflect suspicion, and later on they’d had a lengthy argument about how accurate that was. He’d said that since they were technically related and he was charged with looking after her in that moment, that made him functionally a big brother; she’d said that familial relationships aren’t about function or purpose but about the dynamic between two people, and since they hadn’t grown up together it made no sense for him to introduce them as siblings. And then he’d asked if anyone else but a little sister could annoy him like that and she hadn’t known what else to say. She could’ve brought up the real reason why she’d not liked the label, but the argument wasn’t that important, and besides, he hadn’t really meant he thought of them as siblings. It was just the most useful thing to say at the time. 

They stopped across the road from Kathrine Cliff Antiques – it had a modern façade and recently painted sign but the inside was as much of a mess as any antique shop. Peter showed the woman at the desk his warrant card and introduced her as a trainee, despite the fact she could barely pass for over 16, and asked if he could see the back room while she sniffed around the shop floor for anything haunted. 

She stood still among the shelves of clutter, and listened. _Vestigia_ is everywhere. Pretty much all the time, and most people wouldn’t know how to look for it but can still spot it when it’s intense or very fresh. The more you look, the better you get at sensing it: what caused it, how old it is. Abigail wasn’t nearly as good as Peter but she had been practicing. She sensed _something_ underneath the counter. 

Peter was still in the back going through the list of employees with the shop owner. She ducked behind the counter – under the cash register was a box of antiques not unlike the evidence box they’d left back at the Folly, but these ones were intact. She picked up a small silver letter opener, held it in both hands, and closed her eyes. 

Not long and she started hearing something, a little longer and she could make out the voice, a man’s, with a posh accent like Nightingale’s but higher pitched and rougher. 

‘… really must let Stanley know, before it’s sent – good Heavens man, what are you doing?! You could hurt someone with –

… really must let Stanley know, before it’s sent…’

Yep. 

There was a ghost in there. 

More than likely the letter opener had been the murder weapon, and the ghost was tied to it, repeating the moments before his death until someone came along and released it in front of an unlocked car. One of the employees was collecting haunted objects under the cash register, probably using some excuse like a customer had asked to reserve it and pay for it later. Then he’d choose a target and pick a ghost, wait for the car to be unlocked and break the antique before the person could get in the car. Presumably he had a place to stash the vehicles before taking them to dealerships like the one Peter and Nightingale had staked out, and keys to the shop so he could access his ghost supply in off hours. 

And just like that there was a crash from the back room – Abigail dropped the letter opener and darted away from the counter to see Peter disappearing through the back door and the shop owner standing frozen with shock.

‘What just happened, ma’am?’ Abigail tried to copy the voice Peter used on scared members of the public, and it seemed to work.

‘He – Roger came back from his lunch break, saw your associate and he, he threw that bottle at his head and ran off through the back door…’

‘Was anyone injured?’

‘No, no he missed but – he’s been working here five years, I can’t believe he’s a car thief. Where am I going to find another assistant with that much experience?’

‘I’m sure you’ll manage ma’am.’ So she’d been right, he wasn’t a practitioner, unless he’d managed to avoid learning a single combat spell. There wasn’t much for her to do now except wait in the car, and maybe try to convince the shop owner that the box of haunted antiques needed to be impounded as evidence. 

Peter came back twenty minutes later. He’d caught the car thief, Roger, trying and failing to vault a back garden fence, and called for backup who took him to the station so he could get back to Abigail. 

‘I convinced her to give us these,’ she gestured to the box in the back seat as he started up the car. ‘Do you reckon I could keep them? To study, as compensation for closing this case.’

‘You can study them under supervision and they stay at the Folly, at least until I’ve discussed it with Nightingale.’

Which meant, yes, definitely, probably with minimal manipulation on her part. 

‘Plus, you don’t need to be compensated for work experience.’

‘My contributions go unrewarded again, I see how it is.’

He rolled his eyes, and she smiled and gave him a playful shove – he tried to get her back but missed cause he was taking a roundabout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i!!! love!!!! peter!!!! grant!!!!!!


	6. Cherry Scones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wooo I'm back ladssss hopefully I'll have the final chapter up soon too!! hope everyone's enjoying it!! this chapter is kind of angst-heavy as will the last one be but it ends happily i swear

Peter had dropped her back home late in the afternoon, and up until he closed the door on his way out she’d almost forgotten about everything else that was going on.

The flat was empty. The lights were all off. She wandered slowly through to the kitchen where she saw the orange lamppost light fell slanted through the window on a chippy with a note stuck to the polystyrene lid.

_Bad news  
Back in hospital  
Come see us tomorrow_

Shit. Abigail pulled her phone out to find three missed calls from her mum – shit. She must’ve not noticed while they were working the case. Right. Focus. Breathe. 

Three calls. 

Three calls means…

Not enough for a disaster. If it were really serious she would’ve called at least seven times – the initial three, then two more after ten minutes, then another two after half an hour. And she hadn’t, which meant it was probably alright.

But it wasn’t alright because the post-it note said “bad news” and that term is not used lightly in this household in these kinds of situations so something was horribly wrong and – 

_Just call her back. Call her back and she’ll tell you what’s wrong,_ Abigail thought. Her thumb hovered over the button, shaking slightly.

It rang.

It rang.

It rang.

_Click…Welcome to the O2 messaging service for – 0-7-7 –_

Shit.

Right, so she was probably asleep, or had her phone on silent, or the battery had died, or some other normal explanation. Right. 

She took a breath. Another one. It didn’t help so she squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated. She should eat the chips. She needed dinner. Then she should go to bed and get some sleep and first thing in the morning she would go to the hospital and everything would probably be fine. 

The chips were cold and soggy. 

She lay awake for a long time. 

*

Sunlight streamed in through her bedroom window, and Abigail knew something was wrong before she even opened her eyes. She rolled over and slapped the clock next to her bed – the digital lights blinked on and read 10:49.

Last night’s panic surged back with twice the strength, she shot out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans and a pink hoodie, shoved her phone in one pocket and her keys in the other and ran out the door, barely stopping to lock it behind her. On her way down the stairs she pulled her phone out – her mum had called her at seven, three times. Nothing again till half eight – a text that said “where are you?”. Three more calls. Another text at nine – “answer your phone” – then four more calls before she’d woken up. 

She considered calling her back but the thought just made her heart hammer faster so she texted her that she was on her way and left it at that. 

Time blurred on the way to the hospital. She found her own way through the labyrinth of disinfectant-smelling corridors, she knew it well enough by now. Her feet could take her to the right bed in the right cancer ward in her sleep. Not that it was always the same bed, that changed while nothing else in the hospital seemed to. Before she had time to think what she was going to say she’d arrived.

Paul was still there. Her mum was sitting in a plastic-lined chair bending over the bed and holding his hand. Her dad was sitting next to her with his hand on her shoulder. Neither of them noticed her come in. 

‘Hi,’ she said. 

Her mum glanced up, and then her eyes focused on Abigail and narrowed. ‘And just where have you been?’ Her voice was quiet. Serious.

‘I slept in. I’m sorry. My alarm should’ve gone off, I don’t know why it didn’t.’

‘And before that? Yesterday?’

‘I was… with Peter.’ 

‘We haven’t heard from you in a _day_ , Abigail, we haven’t known where you were. How much is it to ask that you pick up that phone I paid so much for –’

‘Sweetheart,’ her dad cut in. ‘There’s bad news.’

Her mum looked down. She was only angry because she was worried, all three of them knew it. 

‘What’s happened?’ Abigail’s voice is raw when she speaks. 

‘…They might’ve found a growth. A new one. They’re doing more tests tonight.’

‘… Oh.’

‘We’re staying in the hospital till we get the results back. You could wait at home, or –’

‘I think she should stay here; since she’s determined to be uncontactable.’

Her mum’s eyes flicked up and glared at her, the malice draining from them only a second later but the damage was already done. Abigail _had_ wanted to stay in the hospital, had been perfectly ready to, until her mum had said that. She knew she was right, knew she’d caused them more stress than they needed by not answering her phone, she couldn’t blame her for her anger but she couldn’t stay around in the same room while it bubbled. ‘I want to go, actually.’

And then she regretted it, because she should’ve seen her mum was about to apologise and it could’ve been fine but not now she’s made it worse.

‘Oh you do? Why’s that?’

‘I just… I just want to go.’

‘Give me a reason then.’ Her dad was looking between the two of them like he wanted to intervene, but Abigail didn’t give him the chance.

‘Because I don’t want to stay here just to watch you sit and rage at me!’

‘And who’s fault is it that I’m “in a rage”? Because I didn’t just get up this morning and decide to make life hard for you, much as you might think that’s the case – you went AWOL, Abigail, you should know better, you should be more responsible!’

‘I’m trying! I’m trying to be responsible I’m trying all the time! I know, I know, I know, I need to take care of myself and I need to be _responsible_ and I know _why_ I need to be responsible but I can’t do it right all the time!’ She takes a breath and it shakes unexpectedly in her throat. ‘I can’t.’

‘Do you think we like asking this much of you? Do you think we want to be in a situation where we have to put so much pressure on our daughter –’ her dad reached out and put a hand on her mum’s shoulder, about to say something, but she shrugged him off. ‘You know we don’t have a choice in the matter because _God_ knows if I did then you wouldn’t ever have to get your own dinner or spend nights home alone or – or –’ she heaved in a sob. Tears burst down her cheeks. Abigail’s heart sank even further. She’d made her mum cry. Her mum never cried, never. ‘If you want to go, you can go.’

‘I’m sorry –’

‘Go.’

She went. 

She left the hospital before she’d even realised she was moving, concentrating solely on keeping her breathing steady and not letting her lip wobble and keeping her breathing steady and not feeling the prick in the corners of her eyes and keeping her breathing steady and swallowing the lump in her throat. 

Where was she going?

It started to rain. 

It got heavier.

She tucked her hands inside the sleeves of her hoodie. Her fingers were freezing. 

She had her phone in her pocket and her keys and that was it. She considered going back home but she couldn’t even hold onto the thought for long enough, she couldn’t sit in the empty flat. 

She found a park, just a strip of green where people walked their dogs, and stood under a tree. There wasn’t enough leaf cover to keep the rain off, dark tracks ran down the bark of the trunk and fat drops fell on her shoulders. She couldn’t wait it out here.

So she kept walking.

She didn’t know where she was going until she arrived at the back door of the Folly. She hadn’t decided this was where she was going to come, she hadn’t chosen it. Part of her didn’t want to see who was in, just wanted to sit on the back step in the rain, but she didn’t want to catch a cold either so she raised a shivering sleeve-hidden hand and knocked.

Molly came to the door. Her dark eyes widened when she saw Abigail, she tilted her head to the side in concern. Normally Abigail hated being looked at with concern, but right now it was low on the list of things that were bothering her.

‘Is Peter in? Or Nightingale?’

Molly shook her head slowly.

Abigail tried to keep her voice from breaking. ‘Can I stay here for a bit? Please.’ 

Molly nodded swiftly and ushered her inside, and a little bit of relief bloomed inside her. She let Molly show her to the kitchen and sit her down in front of the stove. She held her hands out and her frozen fingers began to prickle uncomfortably in the heat.

By the time the feeling returned to them Molly had finished bustling around and held out a huge mug of hot chocolate, tiny marshmallows and everything. Abigail took it gratefully.

She drank. And then she held the mug up to her face and let the steam warm her cold nose, and blew into it to get the smell of the chocolate more than to cool it down, and stared into its depths like it was some warm, safe hiding place.

She drained the whole thing, slowly, sitting with her feet on the chair and her knees up to her chest, and didn’t think about anything else that had happened that day. She didn’t know what time it was or when Peter and Nightingale would be back, but she didn’t need to. Her phone sat on the table. It didn’t buzz.

Abigail felt a prickle at the back of her neck and turned around to see Molly lurking in the kitchen doorway. ‘Thank you, again.’ She held out the mug. ‘Should I wash this up?’ 

Molly shook her head and plucked the mug from her outstretched hand. She didn’t seem to want Abigail out. And Abigail didn’t have anywhere else to go.

She watched her wash the mug and pull a cookbook down from one of the shelves – it was an old one, definitely, and Abigail wondered what sort of cruel and unusual recipes were inside. Molly beckoned her over to look.

With one slender finger she held open the pages to a recipe for cherry scones. ‘Is that what you’re making?’

Molly pointed to her. ‘You want me to help?’

She nodded knowingly and smiled, and Abigail found herself smiling just a little too. Just faintly.

She rolled up her sleeves and washed her hands while Molly got the ingredients, and together they measured out flour, butter, sugar, with an ancient set of scales that had actual little metal weights to balance out the other side. All the measurements were imperial.

Abigail rubbed butter into the dry ingredients while Molly beat the eggs with the milk – she worked in silence, like she did everything in silence, but it was nice. Once the mixtures were combined she gave the dough to Abigail to knead while she chopped the cherries with the kind of precision and speed that made Abigail remember exactly how scary Molly was to strangers. And Peter. Molly sprinkled the cherry pieces onto the dough between Abigail’s hands, and she took the instruction and folded them in. It was rare that Molly let anyone do anything for themselves where cooking was concerned. She suspected she was letting Abigail help not for the extra pair of hands but because she knew she needed a distraction – Lord was she grateful for it. As they placed little cookie-cuttered dough chunks on a baking tray she felt the tension ease a little more, like she wasn’t nearly so close to the edge as she had been earlier.

They stuck the scones in the oven, and Abigail sat down in front of it, watching them through the glass. Molly sat down next to her, the edge of her skirt tickled Abigail’s calf, and she handed her some spare pieces of cherry. The juice stained Molly’s pale fingertips red, and Abigail’s too when she took them. ‘Thank you.’

Silence.

‘For the cherries, and the hot chocolate, and for letting me help.’

Molly looked at her warmly, said nothing, and smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've had lots to do so been a bit slow on the update but thank you to everyone who has left kudos and comments on my deeply niche mostly projection character study!! this chapter mainly stemmed from the incredibly wholesome concept of Molly and Abigail baking together - molly's kitchen is like her lair so i feel it would be very in character for abigail to be allowed in there to help out sometimes and peter to be confused and disturbed at how she managed that


	7. Until Next Time (It'll All Be Fine)

The atrium was dark. Moonlight glinted off the wooden edges of the furniture. Shadows fell in thick slants all around. Abigail had recognised the engine rumble of Nightingale’s vintage Jag from outside – not that she was that good with cars, she was just familiar with it – and figured the game was up. She waited in the atrium, her phone and her keys in the pocket of her now-dry hoodie. 

Nightingale didn’t quite start when he saw her, but he did seem to stop in his tracks for a split second. ‘Abigail, what on Earth are you doing here?’ he blurted out.

‘I was… I’m just…’

‘You must go _home_ ,’ he started putting his coat back on, the keys to the Jag jingling. ‘I’m sure your parents are wondering where you –’

‘They’re not in.’

Her mouth felt sour. All the things she’d been slowly forgetting she’d just dragged back. 

‘Then, where are they?’ His brow furrowed slightly. 

‘They’re away, and I came here cause I didn’t want to be at home by myself, Molly didn’t mind me staying.’ There was a pleading note to her voice that she hadn’t put there, and although she’d been ready moments ago it was hitting her how much she really didn’t want to leave.

‘Abigail, you simply can’t stay here whenever you feel like it. We can give you food if that’s what you need but you’re old enough to – is everything okay?’

She hadn’t realised how distressed she looked until he asked that, and she tried to say yes, yes everything was fine she’d just prefer it if she didn’t go home, that’s all, but she was scared if she tried to speak then she’d start crying.

‘Abigail?’

‘… They’re in the hospital.’ Her lip wobbled. ‘With my brother. He’s got worse so they’re staying with him. And I was –’ she nearly choked on the lump in her throat. ‘I was going to stay too but I – I had an argument w-with my mum and I,’ she begged herself to keep it together, just keep it together so she could brush it off afterwards, but she could feel an ocean pressing against the dam. ‘I left. I couldn’t go home and be on my own, and I didn’t know where else to go –‘

‘Abigail –’

‘So I came here.’

A single, fat, tear dropped off the end of her chin. She thought she heard it hit the ground, it was so quiet in the atrium, but she might’ve imagined it. 

She stood, arms pressed tight to her body, staring a hole through the floor and shaking with the effort of not breaking down. 

She saw Nightingale’s polished shoes approach and stop. 

‘Please don’t make me go.’

Three more tears slipped down her cheeks. 

He reached out and patted her shoulder, a little awkwardly, probably with no idea how to comfort a crying teenager, and said, ‘It’s quite alright, I won’t.’

Her sigh of relief turned into a sob halfway through, and then another one, and then Nightingale took both her shoulders and he might’ve been telling her she was going to be okay but she didn’t notice because now it all came flooding out, everything, and she was crying hot wet tears and sobbing and gasping.

She’d let her parents down and she’d shouted at her mum and she’d been selfish to lash out at her, she _knew_ none of this was her fault but she was so tired, she was so tired of having to look after herself, having to make things easy for them, and she hated herself for being tired of it because if she was tired then what were they? What were they? Their son was dying and every day they had to choose either to abandon him in a hospital ward or pile more pressure on their daughter, it was a wonder they managed at all and here she was shouting at her mum for a mistake Abigail herself had made. For not answering her phone. Because she was solving a case with Peter. Because she was having _fun_ solving a case with Peter, who treated her like a kid a lot but also knew how good she was and understood her in some weird ways, understood magic, understood that she needed to learn if not why she needed to. It made her feel like she could do something, like she could change things, and she wanted to change everything, to fix everything, but she couldn’t so instead she just ran off all day hunting ghosts and bribing foxes and hanging out with witches and goddesses and whatever Molly was and doing things that made her happy in a way her parents couldn’t ever understand. She couldn’t tell them she was only trying to make it all better. They wouldn’t get it. And she felt so guilty for it all. 

She didn’t know when but she’d curled herself into Nightingale’s chest, crying a wet patch into one of his expensive suits – he had his arms around her gingerly and was saying meaningless things like “there there” but she was in such a state that it actually helped until she realised she was crying into the arms of – who even was he? Her teacher? Her distant cousin’s boss? He was nice and she looked up to him but he wasn’t family.

She thought of her dad, having to watch his wife and his daughter yell at each other while his son lay unconscious in a hospital bed. She hated that he had to suffer that. She hated that he suffered so much he couldn’t stop her suffering, that her parents had to deal with so much they couldn’t stop and help her and she hated that she hated it but she did. She did.  
‘I just, wish I could make, everything okay.’ Her words were muffled by sobs.

‘I understand.’

‘I’m not – I’m not strong enough.’

‘You’re perfectly strong, Abigail, far stronger than most would be in your situation.’

‘If I was strong enough, I wouldn’t wish I didn’t have to be.’

He was quiet for a while and she focused on steadying her breathing. In and out. Slowly.

‘There is not a single person who is truly heroic, truly selfless, truly _strong_ as you say, that hasn’t wished it weren’t all on their shoulders. The fact that there is no one to blame doesn’t mean you can’t be unhappy, that you ought to be content with your circumstances. You do not deserve this, Abigail. No one does. If staying here tonight will make it a little easier for you then I’ll have Molly ready a spare room.’

She pushed away from him and tried to dry her eyes with her sleeve. Her whole face was a mess but it was over. It was all out. ‘Thank you.’

He offered her a sympathetic smile, and she returned it self-consciously as she felt the hollow peace you get after crying wash over her.

‘If you ever breathe a word of this, even to Peter, I’ll know about it, and I’ll make you regret it.’

‘I’ll consider myself warned.’

*

Molly made up a spare bed and Abigail slept more soundly than she had in a long time.

Tomorrow she would eat a massive breakfast, maybe eggs and sausage, or kippers, or something equally calorific and Molly-esque, and she would go to the hospital and apologize to her mum. 

Whatever happened next, with the test results, was out of her control, but she could make things a little easier for them all. As a family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woah i can't believe how long this fic turned out to be!!! thank you to everyone who read it and enjoyed it. i wanted this last chapter to showcase the contrast between her home life and her life at the folly and the difference between who she chooses to be around peter in the books versus who she has to be at home for her parents; but also how at the end of the day no one is to blame for the situation she's in, and it's not on her to be an island, it's not her parents' fault they cant be there for her, it's just kind of a shit thing to happen to a group of people.


End file.
